The Bad News Bears

Directed by: Michael Ritchie

Written by: Bill Lancaster










I was channel surfing a while back when I stumbled upon this movie airing on the MLB Network channel.  I'd seen the re-make several times, but hadn't stopped to watch the original since I was a kid.

The film is remarkably still very strong, and manages to avoid dating itself.  Matthau plays the lovable loser coaching a whole team of lovable losers.  The kids, led by Tatum O'Neal, give the film its weight and momentum and feeling.

What gives the film such standing, I feel, is that it manages to have heart, without resorting to the standard Hollywood corn or cheese.  You care about the kids, but not because they prey upon your sympathies.  Instead, they feel like real human beings.  By the end of the movie, you're rooting for them without necessarily being told to.  It's fascinating the way that was handled.

I'd love to watch the original and the re-make back-to-back.  For now, though, I highly recommend the original.

Rocky

Directed by: John G. Avildsen

Written by: Sylvester Stallone










I am a total sucker for this movie.  There, I've said it.  I love it, and it's one of my favorite movies.

Frankly, I don't feel that it's given enough credit.  Rather, it's often passed off as insincere or kitschy.  In fact, it's the opposite.

Sure, the ending is a bit corny in retrospect, but it's also completely unexpected (especially the first time you see it).  The film does a masterful job of bait-and-switch.  The climax of the film is Rocky's big fight against Apollo Creed (Weathers), but in the end the fight doesn't matter.  In fact, the result of the big match is revealed and pass-over so quickly as to be irrelevant.  That's because, amazingly, the last moment reveals that the movie wasn't about boxing at all (at least, not in the way most sports movies are designed).  Rather, boxing is a metaphor for the different parts of the characters' lives.  Sure, most sports movies use the sport as a metaphor, but it's hard to find one which reveals that metaphor so surprisingly.  ("Field of Dreams" might have used it just as effectively, but it's not a surprise the way it is in "Rocky."  "On the Waterfront" uses boxing as a metaphor at a key point, but the film itself is void of any actual boxing matches.)

I'd also like to ask this question: How many other movies capture low-class life so well?  There's no glitz or glamor to Rocky's life until the final fight.  Rather, he's a loser for most of the movie, and so are his friends.  Even his girlfriend Adrian (Shire) is crippled by her shyness and just a bit off-kilter.  Rocky doesn't live in a world where aspirations are big and dreams are bigger.  It's a world where people struggle to get along, and are easily sidetracked.

Rocky's scene where he tries to save a young teenage girl from developing a bad reputation shows us how complex things are in this world.  On the one hand, he's trying to offer her advice on how to better herself.  This advice is ultimately rejected, and Rocky's sincerity is twisted and misread.  But, at the same time Rocky is trying to tell this girl to live a better life, he himself is already a part of what he is trying to warn her about.  Although his dreams are tied to professional boxing, he actually makes a living acting as "muscle" for the local mafia.  Everything is a bit muddled and unclear.  Rocky prefers to keep things black and white, unaware that he lives in a world of gray.

I think "sincerity" is the key word in appreciating "Rocky."  You have to watch it in a sincere manner, putting aside any cynicism.  The actors are all sincere and straight in their performances.  (Yes, even Carl Weather's over-the-top job as Apollo Creed is just as honest as it is over-the-top.)  The characters in the film are sincere in their hopes and dreams and unfortunate realities.  Ultimately, the message of the film is sincere in what it tries to show us about ourselves.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Written and Directed by: John Cassavetes












I'll have to be honest: I didn't know what I was getting into when I decided to try watching my first Cassavetes film.  I'd heard his name thrown around as some great art film director, but had never quite felt like I was ready to access his work.  Years went by, until finally I decided to give it a shot, and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" was recommended as a good jumping in point.

My first reaction was that I didn't like it.  It was slow.  The plot is painfully leisurely, given that the key element of the story is provided in the title.  Meanwhile, there are epic scenes of burlesque shows and the main character (Cosmo Vitelli, played by Ben Gazzara) taking his girls out for a night on the town, which don't seem to add much to the story, and rather feel like they are padding.  All in all, my first impression was negative.  I just didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Yet, for some reason, I wasn't able to merely dismiss it and move on.  It kept nagging at my mind.  I had the strange feeling that I'd missed something important, and when I get that feeling it usually turns out to be true.  I threw the DVD back into the machine and decided to check out the special features.  (For the record, I was watching the 1978 John Cassavetes edit of the film, which is available via the Criterion Collection.)

The biggest key that I had missed was the "American Dream" theme that Cassavetes was trying to convey (though how I missed what is the most common theme is beyond me).  With that context provided, I gained a new appreciation for the film.  The scenes that once felt like padding suddenly revealed exactly what Vitelli's version of the "American Dream" was, and the rest of the film his his desperate attempt to keep it all.  I was also impressed with some of the stylistic elements of making the film that Cassavetes employed, which included a generous crowd of amateur actors with a handful of professionals to raise the bar.

So, the question becomes: Do you need all this information to appreciate the film (be it this film, or any film)?  (Watch out now, or I might drop the "death of the author" bomb.)  I have to admit that my opinion of the film changed significantly with a little bit of research.  But should that research have been necessary?  I missed the "American Dream" point, but was that my fault, or the director's?  I'm willing to go half way on it - I probably didn't give it enough thought, but the director could have made it a bit more accessible.

I will give "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" this much credit: it made me think.  This is a feature that most movies - the once which aim merely to entertain (not that there's anything wrong with that - don't achieve.  The film made me want to find out more.  And the more enlightened I became about the movie, the better I felt the movie was.  This may not always be the case - sometimes the background material doesn't change my impression.  But, in this case, Cassavetes hooked me.  I'll be checking out more.